That makes so much more sense lmao. I’m definitely guilty of being bad at spotting satire in text.

We’re talking about the development of Christianity, not politics, right?

Yeah, it was completely fucked up during the Fascist times: whilst the majority of people were dirt poor (Portugal even receive Food Aid back then) the Church was totally in bed with the Fascists, with priests using their position to spew pro-Fascist propaganda and controlling the poor, profiting massively from it, the very opposite of the supposed teachings of Christ about helping the poor.

Fortunately, after the Revolution in 74 that overthrew Fascism, the one smart thing done in this country was to massively invest in Education for all, so Generation X and younger pretty much all have a complete high-school education with a large percentage of them having degrees (to the point that if you look at the tables of average education of countries in Europe, Portugal has this strange characteristic of having lots of people with only primary education or less, lots of people with tertiary education and just a small number of people with only up to secondary education - reflecting the older generations having been severely under-educated followed by a complete reversal for the younger generations many of not most of whom had the chance for free or near free to get University and Technical Education and took it).

I believe it was the mix of remembering what the Church did back in Fascist days (I too heard the stories from my parents) and the massive massive improvement in education levels for the younger generations, that are behind the massive drop in practicing Catholics (or any other religions) in this country in the last 40 years or so.

Curiously, of late there has been a small uptick in religiosity due to immigration since it’s mostly from Brasil, a country which doesn’t have the same level of access to Education as Portugal and whose exit from Fascism is more recent (and was even sliding back recently with Bolsonaro, something that did not happen in Portugal).

That said you can see the same fall in Religious attendance as Education levels went up in other countries in Europe who didn’t start quite as poor and with quite such a disgustingly behaving Church as Portugal.

Exactly.

My kind interpretation of the previous poster’s comment is that he or she may have confused the latter with the former: looked at highly religious places, saw them moving forward in social terms and thought it was the religion moving forward when in fact it was the people dropping the religion and thus moving forward.

He’s clearly farming downvotes by simplistic antagonism.

Idk what people get from farming votes, negative or positive, but it seems people do do it.

Glad you understand.

That is just your moronic believe. You can’t possibly know what would have happened and you stating it as if it was a fact makes you look like a fool.

I’m not religious

(X) to doubt

if there was no religion you wouldn’t be able to post your retarded comments on the internet

First of all, that’s patently false. Religion might have played a significant role in education back in the dark ages where they wouldn’t LET anyone get an education anywhere else, but that hasn’t been the case for centuries. The only relationship religion has had with modern science and technology is an adversarial one, neutral at best.

Second, please cool it with the r-slur. You calling me that says nothing about me and everything about your bigotry and refusal to evolve with the times.

May i introduce you to the wonders of science?

Citation needed